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The transgender lawyer who sued a transsexual solicitor is now suing Father Ted writer Graham Linehan for defamation and harassment, as well as for misuse of private information.

Linehan has been a vocal opponent of transgender activists' attempts to expand the definition of 'woman' to include people with penises. After clashing with Stephanie Hayden on Twitter, last week he told The Times that Hayden was a "dangerous troll" who tweeted details about his wife's business to "shut me up". Hayden, who has a history of commencing legal actions against those who cross her, has sued.

She claims that Linehan is a transphobe who publicised confidential information by referring to her former male identities in his tweets. She told RollOnFriday, "My right to not reveal that link has been removed from me forever now". Hayden maintains a public YouTube channel which included several videos featuring her as a man and which included her male name in their titles. However she deleted them from the platform this week. Hayden told RollOnFriday, "The videos were published many years ago long before my formal transition", and that until recently "nowhere within the public domain was there any document saying Tony Halliday/Steven Hayden is now Stephanie Hayden".

Hayden claims that, thanks to Linehan and The Times, "a worldwide audience" is now aware of her previous gender. Asked whether her profile as a transgender activist meant that most people would have become aware fairly quickly that she was once a man, Hayden said, "I am not a Transgender Activist. I was known only by a small specialist Twitter audience until recently".

Hayden said she would not sue the newspaper over its interview because "I believe in press freedom", but, "If the line is crossed by The Times then I will not hesitate to commence legal action".

"And what if it identifies as a bull, Ted?"

Hayden has also accused Linehan of harassing her by retweeting company numbers of businesses which listed her as an officer, along with suggestions she ran them for criminal purposes. Hayden concedes in her claim that she also tweeted a company number, this one belonging to Linehan’s wife’s business, but rejected Linehan's claim that she had 'doxxed' anyone. As well as quickly deleting it, she explained, "No mention was made of Linehan or his wife". She said that the point of the tweet was "to indicate that many people have companies and it is all information within the public domain".

Although Hayden referred to only one company number in her claim, she actually included the details of three companies linked to Linehan's wife in two seperate tweets:

Hayden told RollOnFriday she "completely forgot" about the second tweet, but "it does not actually change the substance of what I say".

Hayden is also suing Linehan for several tweets which she says are defamatory, including one in which the BAFTA-winning scribe wrote, "I don’t respect the pronouns of misogynists, stalkers or harassers, and Tony is all three":

In a twitter row in 2013 with a woman called Cassandra Moss and her husband, Hayden tweeted dozens of times at Moss. Hayden suggested that Moss was "sitting on your large arse drinking your husband's money away", and asked if she had taken "your lunchtime pills after your sausage plait". She also referred to Moss as "it". Hayden endorsed as "funny" one of three spoof twitter accounts set up at the time of Hayden's feud and which referred to Moss as a "retard", a "dirty bitch" and a "wine-loving toiletlover". Asked if such actions justified the labels Linehan had assigned to her, Hayden said "I cannot discuss the Moss case save to say that a settlement was agreed back in 2014". She denied having anything to do with the spoof accounts.

Linehan told RollOnFriday, "People are absolutely terrified of speaking out, and I totally understand that. If the entry level to being considered a bigot is saying men are not women, then how on earth can you get to the other topics and talk about them."

He said he was taking a stand because, "there are so many implications to redefining the word ‘woman’. Sport will change utterly. Vulnerable women in places like shelters and prisons will be at greater risk. And just the basic day-to-day grind of having to pretend something’s true when it’s not true."

Commenting on the characterisation of 'deadnaming' as a transphobic hate crime, Linehan said, "If you have multiple identities then surely its entirely valid to point that out. This is a charter for criminals to say ‘you can’t talk about my past’. It’s ridiculous."

But the IT Crowd creator described how people had contacted friends in private telling them to unfollow and block him because of his stance. "It’s like Scientology", he said. "When someone transgresses in Scientology, a series of things happen to that person. They’re harassed, they’re isolated from their family. It’s very important to do all this so that person can’t get information to people. And that’s what’s effectively happening now. Hayden’s action is an attempt to just scare me enough that I’ll stop talking about it".

"It’s lonely at the moment", said Linehan. "I wish more people, just a few more people, would say, ‘hang on, this is bullshit’. Let's see what happens".

On the legal issue where do we stop? If someone was fat and now is thin and doesn't want anyone seeing their fact photos do they have a right to be forgotten? I am not even sure if it is confidential that transwomen previously were men as surely if you look at a lot of them you can tell immediately? so it is not inherently in a sense already in the public domain?

I shall now self-identify as a senior equity partner within my firm, and sue the rest of the partnership when they inevitably point out their subjective and demeaning "truth" that I remain an associate.

Hayden's claim sounds like the sort of thing that needs a good, hard, firm security for costs application.

Of course, we have the right to our perception. When I see someone with a clearly male face in a dress, I think a man in a dress. And the more this trans lobby pushes, well I am already arrived at the wall. I no longer will use their terms because the parroting of their ideology means for us as speakers that we really believe it. It has been a form of polite social discourse which has now been hijacked into "you better or else." No thanks, I'll stick by what my perception tells me. I dislike this piggish movement that doesn't care how woman hating or homophobic it is. Good on GL for calling out this bully. And we have all seen this man bully quite a bit on twitter.

I had to stop my daughter committing a hate crime the other day. She's 9. We were walking through a park. There was a park run on. A clearly male-to-female transexual ran past. Largely, it was the 3 days stubble that gave it away, but obviously she was stunning and brave.

"Why is that man dressed as..." she managed, before I had to say "No, shhh, stop" and quietly explain that one is not allowed to say things like that. She thought this was silly.

She claims that Linehan is a transphobe who publicised confidential information by referring to her former male identities in his tweets. She told RollOnFriday, "My right to not reveal that link has been removed from me forever now".

[She added] "nowhere within the public domain was there any document saying Tony Halliday/Steven Hayden is now Stephanie Hayden".

Every day, I awake fearful that this day I will not find a story of people having arguments about something someone said or did relating to race, gender or disability. Well not today Satan! Ye shall not have your normalcy! Thank you, RoF, sincerely, for keeping these ground-breaking and truly enlightening stories present in our minds.

Trouble with people like Cafe Latte is, OK, one of the problems with people like Cafe Latte is that thanks to the conditioning they receive from the media about what an ideal male or female person is supposed to look like they aren't actually as good at spotting trans men and women as they imagine they are. Most people are, gosh horror, f-ing ugly and do not conform to airbrushed Holywood & fashion magazine perfection. Women look masculine and men are less than chiseled hunks. We can safely ignore everything the likes of Cafe Latter have to say since all they are actually commenting on is what they would in their dreams like to f—- IF, big IF, they had the opportunity and rohypnol available. Cafe Latte is no different from the homophobic tosspots of yore who couldn't handle the idea that some people might be gay without prefacing their microbrained fear-filled contribution with a declaration of how they were definitely, now way, absolutley not, gay themselves. With maybe a bit of queer bashing just to prove it.

You could not make this up it is so pathetic, lol. I resent taxpayers money (includes mine) being wasted on the police involvement in this matter. What a sad, pathetic world we live in with inverted values. That which is good is called evil, and that which is evil is called good. I (like many) stick one finger up to this and will do (and say) what I think is right, and politically correct society can take a running jump off a short pier!

the bigger issue being lost in Ms Hayden’s red faced gammon tantrum is the origin of the argument: a petition to Stonewall to try deal with friction between transgender rights and women’s rights. Ms Haydn couldn’t have a bigger or better definition of irony if it bit her on her front bottom (which apparently is now the most acceptable way to refer to female or trans female body parts to avoid offending trans people).

Anonymous the ideal female is female. Transwomen try to look like their fantasy of what a woman should look like and further reinforce gender stereotypes. Do you think it is social media that forces us to believe that a male with 3 day stubble can pass? We all instinctively know how to differentiate between male and female. Our species depends on it.

Has anyone looked at the changes to the Equality Act guidance quietly issued today? Find this fairly tortuous and not sure either side will be happy ....... don’t suppose it matters though as most businesses/ organisations seem too scared of being sued / harassed to use the single sex exemptions anyway.

The trans conversation is often violent in nature. Police are now visiting people for contradicting the trans ideology - “misgendering” in other words. This is not a crime which even the police admit. Men are now sharing toilets with women in law firms and other professions. Women are not comfortable with this but dare not speak out. This is not right.